Harry Sintonen22h ago

Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Estonia are soon enabling offline debit card payments for at least seven days without network connectivity. The change covers payments for essential goods in physical trade, such as food, medicine, and fuel. Each country has made - or is in the process of making - the required changes to their related regulations to enable it.

The motivation for this change is to enable payments even in exceptional situations such as network disruptions due to sabotage or conflict. TL;DR: You can pay for essentials even if Russia cuts the cables.

Plans for this change were announced in May 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/nordics-estonia-plan-offline-card-payment-back-up-if-internet-cut-2025-05-07/

#resilience #preparedness #infrastructure #payments #banking

Show threadOjārs Kapteinis
@harrysintonen @vicgrinberg Hmm, they are implementing it only now? If I’m not mistaken, @latvijasbanka.lv went live with a solution more than a year ago https://www.bank.lv/en/news-and-events/news-and-articles/news/16683-management-framework-for-critical-financial-services-has-been-updated
Management framework for critical financial services has been updated | Latvijas Banka

The Council of Latvijas Banka has adopted the Regulation on the Management of Critical Financial Services that will come into force on 1 November 2023.

Apr 13 at 4:58pmWeb
Show threadHarry Sintonen18h ago
@latvijasbanka.lv Oh nice! Likely it takes some time to adjust the policies. Technically there's no real challenge I believe.